Olympic Dream A Reality For Several Ice Dancing Teams With Ties To Metro Detroit
DETROIT (WWJ) - Three ice dancing teams, who train in metro Detroit, have been named to the U.S. Olympic team for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi.
The team of Meryl Davis and Charlie White were expected to be on the team since they won the U.S. figure skating championships on Saturday and that became a reality Sunday afternoon. They train at Arctic Edge in Canton , along with Maia and Alex Shibutani , who came in third and also made the team.
Madison Chock and Evan Bates, who were second at the U.S. Figure skating championships, will head to the Olympics as well, they train at the Novi Ice arena where Kevin Palambit is the assistant manager.
"They are super friendly, really personable ... it's awesome, it's not often that you get to meet ... a potential Olympian ... it's a cool thing," he said.
The Olympic team will be announced Sunday.
"We're all really excited here, you know, we're, we're all kind of a close family over here , so they stop in...they're here almost every single day, we're excited to see them again before, hopefully they go to the Olympics," said Palambit.
"We're just excited over here to see, see how Evan and Maddie do ... keepin' our fingers crossed," he said.
Palambit says that there are so many ice rinks and a lot of excellent ice skating coaches cling to the Detroit area that Olympic dreams are a natural.
Men's figure skater Jeremy Abbott trains at the Detroit Skating Club and is also a likely Olympic contender.